The woman at the grocery store looked at my overfull shopping cart and my half dozen children and proclaimed, \u201cI could never do that.\u00a0 You must be a saint.\u201d\u00a0 People say this to me all the time, canonizing me against my will.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
I\u2019m not a saint.\u00a0 I\u2019m just a normal mom.\u00a0 I\u2019m a normal mom with 6 children.\u00a0 The six children don\u2019t make me a saint, they just mean that I know more about the inside of a delivery room than most non-medical people.<\/p>\n
Having a big family does not mean that I am more organized than anyone else.\u00a0 I am better at throwing stuff away or dragging it off to Goodwill than almost anyone, but that\u2019s not the kids fault.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been throwing junk out for years.\u00a0\u00a0 I do admit to owning a label maker, but it ran out of paper a year or so ago.\u00a0 I keep meaning to buy more, but it never makes it on my list.<\/p>\n
Having a big family does not mean we are wealthy.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure how people have come to the conclusion that we are, but I know they think so.\u00a0 I often am told, \u201cI could never afford to feed all those kids.\u201d\u00a0 We can\u2019t really either if you look at it on paper.\u00a0 We\u2019re not richer than other people, we\u2019re just better with coupons and bargain hunting.\u00a0 It\u2019s not cleverness on my part, we like to actually have food to eat.<\/p>\n
All these kids don\u2019t mean that I was somehow created with more patience than anyone else.\u00a0 I firmly believe that patience is built up through strength training.\u00a0 The more times you use it, the more endurance you have.\u00a0 If the people in the store were looking, they\u2019d see that I have ample opportunity to practice patience every day.\u00a0 I wasn\u2019t blessed with perfect children, just with the opportunity to learn patience.\u00a0 A lot of opportunity.<\/p>\n
Homeschooling all these kids doesn\u2019t mean that I\u2019m some kind of genius.\u00a0 It simply means that I was clever enough to buy the teacher\u2019s manuals and actually read them. \u00a0\u00a0 I not smarter than anyone else, I\u2019m just honest about the fact that I don\u2019t know everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The truth of it all is that I\u2019m not better or holier than anyone else. Having sainthood bestowed on me by random strangers makes me slightly uncomfortable.\u00a0 I\u2019m not doing anything miraculous, heroic, or superhuman.\u00a0 I\u2019m just a woman who loves my husband and our children and tries to do the best I can for them.\u00a0 Some days I am a spectacular success, some a spectacular failure.\u00a0 Most days I am just average and getting along like everyone else.\u00a0 My average is just bigger and the volume makes it look more impressive than it really is.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The woman at the grocery store looked at my overfull shopping cart and my half dozen children and proclaimed, \u201cI could never do that.\u00a0 You must be a saint.\u201d\u00a0 People say this to me all the time, canonizing me against my will.\u00a0 I\u2019m not a saint.\u00a0 I\u2019m just a normal mom.\u00a0 I\u2019m a normal mom […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n